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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23143216">learn to live again</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MessedUpMessages/pseuds/MessedUpMessages'>MessedUpMessages</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who &amp; Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>But not explicit, Character Study, Gen, Living life on the edge, No Quotation Marks, if you like bittersweet nostalgia this is your fic, im sad, kind of implied almost slash with the doctor and yaz, kind of melancholy, musings, my sad rambling because the season fucked me up, no beta we die like men</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:46:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,129</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23143216</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MessedUpMessages/pseuds/MessedUpMessages</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctor has lived for a long time, and most of it she doesn't even remember, which might be bugging her more than she realizes. As she makes her rounds, saying her goodbyes, she makes peace with herself.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>learn to live again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>ahh, she's back! i break my endgame-induced hiatus with a depressing doctor who fic, what are the odds?</p><p>needless to say, the season left me feeling a little bereft. i was very... hollow? after watching it? and it kind of hurt A LOT, so i wrote this in like fifteen minutes like last week but finally got around to posting it.</p><p>if you guys want to chat theories, please do, my tumblr is daleks-and-angels-and-vulcans<br/>(theres like literally nothing on there because i don't know how to use it)</p><p>https://www.tumblr.com/blog/daleks-and-angels-and-vulcans</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If there's anything prisons are good for, it's thinking. Lots of time to think. You're probably supposed to think on what you've done, but what about when you don't remember what you did?<br/>
That's what you think about, when you're in prison.<br/>
How many lives has she lived? The doctor wonders. How many lives has she lost? How many times did they steal her away and buckle her to that chair, then strip away everything she thought she knew? She skirts around the next, most obvious question.<br/>
What did she do, during those lives she lived and lost?<br/>
She likes to think she was kind. She has to believe it.<br/>
But at the same time, she's self aware enough to realize that she wasn't always as benevolent as she fancies herself now. She knows the time lords are- were- callous. Watchers of the universe with no interference. But was she a willing participant? Complicit? Or did she rebel as she always has? Violently and with fire?<br/>
Of course, for all she knows, maybe this is the only one of her lives where she grows this close to humanity, this close to earth, this human. It's entirely possible this is just a fluke, a random accident spawned from an imperfect set of events. Maybe she only grew to be like this because of the master, because she travelled unhindered, because of Susan and Ian and Barbara, because of Adric and Sarah Jane and ace and rose and jack and Martha and mickey and Donna and Amy and Rory and Clara and bill and nardole and Ryan and graham and yaz. Because of them and countless others. Is it possible that she was so different, in those other lives, that she would remain unrecognizable to herself? Did she not love at all in those lives? Did she ever before have hearts so full of caring as she did now?<br/>
Ruth had not known her. Even without the foreknowledge of future regenerations, Ruth should have been able to recognize her. Should have. But she hadn't, and that frightened the doctor more than she would like to admit.<br/>
Huh. scared. That's new.<br/>
She knows none of it really matters; as Ruth had said, her past did not predetermine her future. But it still stung, to have been deceived about every aspect of her life for so, so long. She would have liked to have known. It would have been good.<br/>
She doesn't even start to think about the rest. She has a sneaking suspicion that the reluctance wont last long- she's never been good at staving off her curiosity(or maybe she has, maybe she just can't remember-), but for now she allows herself to deny the impossibility of her existence. The fact that there may be more of her out there, living on indefinitely.<br/>
Was her race any kinder than the time lords? Do they live on, or did their hubris bring about their own downfall? Or did they too set themselves up as watchers, as non-confrontational kings and cowards and judiciaries, too nervous to use the power they had harnessed?<br/>
Maybe they were the opposite. Maybe their natural aquiring of their abilities let them live gentler lives.<br/>
Or maybe they were worse.<br/>
Prisons are great for thinking, especially when you’d rather be doing anything but.</p><p>But maybe she is still the doctor, just… with a bit extra. Maybe she can carry on as she always had. The universe might still have room for the lonely wanderer, the oncoming storm, the trickster and the destroyer of worlds. </p><p>Jack doesn't let her mope. She doesn't know how he is here, yet, but she expects she’ll get around to that soon enough.<br/>
Well, he does let her mope, but it's only for a few weeks, long enough for her mind to settle into a well worn rut of ‘what if, what if, what if?’. Then he shows up in her cell and drags her off into the stars.<br/>
She thinks she might thank him later, at some point. When she isn't fit to murder him for invading her sulk. She knows she's supposed to offer thanks, but he knows enough to understand that now is not the time for joviality. Instead he helps her locate the tardis, shoves her through the ancient, ancient blue doors, tags along on she goes on some half-hearted wander, then gently pushes her back to earth. She needs it, he knows. The vibrant potency of humanity that sparks real joy in her, a spark she’s been missing- for a while now. They travelled for far too long. She's wearing out.</p><p>Before she leaves the tardis, she asks something that's been nagging her for a while.<br/>
Did you know? She asks, and he grimaces.<br/>
No. not for certain. But i think I've met some of you before- ones that weren't you.<br/>
She nods. She's not angry- she knows he knows how time travel works.<br/>
I figured, she says, and leaves because there isn't much else for her to say, and she has others to talk to.</p><p>They're accepting, but she thinks that might mostly be the fact that they don't really understand. She can't blame them, really. It's not their fault, it's hers.<br/>
They don't match, not anymore. It's like how Jack felt, on satellite five. She knows this feeling. Nothing could ever restore their normality, their unblemished perception of her.<br/>
She leaves them. She needs someone who doesn't know her, who can see her without the taint of her rage and bristle and fire.<br/>
Someone who understands would be nice, too.</p><p>She visits them, of course. Several decades later. She’s visited a few times over the long years. To wean them off, she doesn't say, but she thinks they might know anyway. They’re drawing away too.<br/>
She'd like them to live. Long and happy, and that's only possible without her in the picture.<br/>
So she visits, one last time. It's about a decade since her last, but not much has changed for her. She’s still alone.<br/>
She sits with Yasmin at her dining table, nursing a cup of tea. Children squabble in the yard- three of them, the youngest somewhere in her teens. They will barely remember her, but she loves them, even though she’s only met them a handful of times. She’ll see them again, at least.<br/>
Yasmin seems to know why she's here. She's smiling sadly. There's some wrinkles by her eyes that hadn't been there last time. The doctor does her best to ignore the passage of time, but it doesn't always work out.<br/>
This is it then? yaz asks, slurping her tea. Motherhood has suited her well. Her hair is long and plaited, glossy. Her badge is hanging on the hook on the back of the kitchen door.<br/>
Yeah, the doctor answers, glancing out the window. It's time, she adds.<br/>
She bites back at the question, but yaz asks it for her.<br/>
Did you ever think- back then- that we might have-<br/>
She cuts herself off, eyes wet. She wipes her hand across them.<br/>
Nevermind. She says instead. There's no use dwelling on the past.<br/>
The doctor nods stiffly. Quite right.<br/>
The children come in, raucous and lively. They gleefully throw themselves at the doctor. Yaz is smiling, a bit wetly.</p><p>She lingers, for a while. Hours, but it feels like milliseconds.<br/>
Say goodbye, girls, yaz says eventually. It's past the childrens bed time, but this was more important.<br/>
You won't see the doctor for a while.<br/>
She catches the doctor's eye, and she nods from within the hugs she's been enveloped in. yasmin adds, you’ll see her again. It just might be a while.</p><p>Ryan grew away from her a long time ago, when he was the first of the three to realize that even though she could bring them back at the same time, they still got older. Life still moved on. He didn't want to spend his life on the tardis, but things got in the way. Once he got his feet on earth, he wasn't very eager to leave. He was ready to be done a long time ago. He's still a little bitter, but he puts it aside very well. She's proud of him.<br/>
That doesn't mean he doesn’t care.<br/>
We’ll miss you, he says truthfully, and the doctor smiles.<br/>
I know, she says, soft. I'll miss you too. But it's time for me to let go. I put people in too much danger- travelling alone is best. I'll be fine.<br/>
Rule one: the doctor lies.<br/>
I don't think you will be, he says skeptically. He knows her too well. The doctor grins.<br/>
It's a little sad and frayed on the edges, with lots of words inside it.<br/>
I know, it says, looking around at the family pictures and mementos and keepsakes of a life full and happy without her in it. I won't be anywhere near fine, but you will.<br/>
Ryan seems to hear what she doesn't say anyway, and gives her another hug. I'll let Annie know you stopped by, he says. I assume she’ll be seeing you?<br/>
They all will, she reassures him, and he knows she’ll be watching over them.<br/>
She turns to go.<br/>
Doc, Ryan calls after her. Thank you for it all. You helped me find myself.<br/>
She nods once, but he's not done.<br/>
I hope you can do the same, he says, then the door is shut and she is walking away, abandoning them, like she has every time before.<br/>
At least it's not Aberdeen this time.</p><p>She comes too late for graham. It wasn't cancer, just life. One of the universes many little ways of exacting its justice on her endlessness.<br/>
She thinks he might have known it was his last time when she visited him a year ago, but she visits the stone anyway. It's the principle of things.<br/>
Hey graham, she says tightly. I've said goodbye to the others. They’re doing fine without me- not that I expected otherwise.<br/>
She's talking to deaf ears, preaching obvious truths. She knows.</p><p>Jack tags along, for a couple centuries. She owes it to him. She says it's just for one more trip, every time. It's how she justifies it to herself.<br/>
He says torchwood is dust not, and he's been forgotten. He has no more ties to earth. Anyone who might have loved him died a long time ago. They're a little bit the same, but he knows he has an ending. A finality. She has nothing like that.<br/>
He's not enough.</p><p>Solitude is great for thinking. For musing on why she has to go on when everything else has left her behind. It's a special kind of irony, to live forever and be left in the dust by everything she cares about.<br/>
There's only so much one regeneration can take. After a while it wears out. Stretched thin. She drops by the children again, now grown themselves. It's frightening, how fast they move on.<br/>
When you see me again, I'll have a different face, she says, and tries to help them understand. (they don't, of course, but she can't do anything about it.)<br/>
Later, nestled deep in the bosom of the galaxies, the doctor allows herself to begin to die.<br/>
Forgetting is such a part of her at this point, and she sheds vestiges of herself effortlessly. The coat and suspenders into the wardrobe. The sonic consumed by the tardis. Boots, shirt, pantaloons. She reinvents herself, one piece at a time, as she has done innumerable times now.<br/>
She contemplates not coming back. To die, finally. Some part of her wants to try and do it properly this time. To force the regeneration back within herself until it devours her from the inside out. Another life will kill a lot of people, she realizes now.<br/>
But she is selfish, so, so selfish. She is a coward, a trickster, and selfish.<br/>
Another life will kill a lot of people, but it just might save more, a little traitorous voice says quietly.<br/>
Fine, she groans to no one. I'll keep going. For the universe. But i will not put another at my side again. I will not allow myself to put anyone else into such danger. I am enough peril as it is.<br/>
The tardis hums in contentment.<br/>
Her thief is lying to herself again. She knows her thief knows that while prisons may be good for thinking, and solitude is better, her thief also knows that the best place to think is with her friends.<br/>
She just has to find some new ones.<br/>
So as the doctor releases the song of life from her dying cells, the tardis wishes on a distant star for her thief to make some friends, and live again.</p>
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